As I sit behind Mazzio's Italian Eatery (catching awkward looks from passer-bys)

I think that title would make a great name for a song.

(sings "as I sit behind Mazzio's Italian Eatery...catching awkward looks from passer-bys")

Ok...ok...enough of that. Let's get to the point. I'm sitting here behind a great italian food joint in Nederland, TX. You might ask where that may be. Trust me...not important. What is important is that I have come out here to J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Center hoping to get out to my site (LNWMA) to begin my fish/invert sampling and vegetation surveys. But, alas, Dolly is standing in my path. Today we did a dry run. That run lasted about, oh, 40 minutes until the rain and winds came. After calling it quits we headed back to the Center. By this time I am soaked and COVERED in sediment. The great thing about these throw traps is that they are large, slightly heavy, and when you throw one in to the water, guess what, you too must jump in and hold it in place. This means sinking in sometimes more than 2 ft. of mud. Yes, yes, wonderful! So now my shoes are soaked, dirty, and so is everything else on me.

Now, after arriving about at the center, we discuss the real sampling that should be occuring tomorrow, and we decided (thanks Dolly) to go ahead and cancel the fish/invert sampling. Trust me, I potentially just saved two people about $40, time and energy to get up here tonight to help with the sampling. What I will try to do tomorrow are my vegetation transects...3 of them...1000m a piece. Point intercept recording will occur every 5m along these transects. In total that's 600 readings. Not only that but I will have to do a percent cover quadrat reading every 100m. It's going to be a looong day tomorrow if we end up doing it.

I should digress from my bitching, to reinform my readers that, yes, I still do love what I am doing. There is just something about getting muddy I enjoy thoroughly. It's just the process of cleaning up that I don't like. I am blessed to be doing what I am doing and blessed to have patient and understanding help from TWPD. Thanks guys! Oh and one more thing...research can get boring...during the times when you're not doing it. I'll end with that. Have a great one y'all. I'll let you know about my experiences.